Starting from Square Two Read online

  She thought of telling the women in the group about going out with him. But she was feeling guilty about it. The women always talked about how they couldn’t imagine dating someone again. What right did she have to have dinner with a man—and what right did she have to actually enjoy it?

  “Having a baby alone just isn’t something I’m going to do,” Arden said.

  Everyone else got quiet.

  Gert found the silence uncomfortable.

  “Well, let’s move on,” Brenda said. “What else happened this week?”

  Gert saw no volunteers among the ten women there. She started reluctantly. “I had dinner with someone,” she said. “On Saturday.”

  The other women leaned closer. “A man?” Brenda asked. Gert nodded. “Your first date since…?”

  “Yes,” Gert said. “But it wasn’t really a date. Just a friendly dinner. I met him when I was out with friends, and he asked me to dinner, and I figured I might as well try, just to see what it was like.”

  “And how was it?”

  She shrugged. “His name’s Todd. He seemed nice….”

  “But he’s not your husband,” Brenda said.

  “No,” Gert said, shaking her head. “No one could be. And he’s very different from Marc. But in a way, I was glad. If he was anything like him I’d have felt like I was cheating.”

  “Don’t ever feel like that,” Brenda said. “Don’t any of you feel like that.”

  “There’s at least room in our hearts for new friends,” Michele said.

  “Are you going to see him again?” Leslie asked.

  “I think so,” Gert said. “It’s strange, but I feel like I want to learn more about him. But just last week we were all saying how we couldn’t possibly imagine dating again. What right do I have to go out with anyone when it’s only been a year and a half?”

  They all got quiet.

  “I have a confession,” Michele said. “I know I said I couldn’t date for years. But sometimes, when I’m in bed at night, I miss being held.”

  “I do, too,” Leslie said.

  “It’s odd,” Brenda said. “I think the better your relationship was with your husband, the more you probably will need to find that closeness again. It’s just that the idea of being with a stranger repulses us. What we really want is to be with our husbands. But it’s impossible. Right now, a fantasy seems better than a real person.”

  “When are you going to see him again?” Arden asked.

  “Next weekend,” Gert said.

  “Those friends you mention,” Brenda said, “make sure you don’t let their notions of dating and five-nights-a-week partying push you. If you need four months to get to know this guy, to get to the point when you so much as want to kiss him, you take four months. Gert has to do what’s right for Gert.”

  Gert smiled. Brenda often lapsed into social worker–speak.

  “Are those girls younger than you?” Michele asked. “When you talk about them, they seem like it.”

  “No,” Gert said. “But sometimes, I feel about five years older than them.”

  “It’s not that you’re five years older,” Arden said. “It’s that they’re emotionally five years younger than you. If you’re between twenty-five and thirty-five and you’ve never been married, you get to subtract five years from your age. So your friends are twenty-three or twenty-four. And if you have children before you’re thirty-five, you add five years to your age.”

  “What if you’re a widow?” Brenda asked.

  “You add a hundred,” someone said, and all the women laughed.

  At work, someone had left a card on Gert’s desk. It was a congratulations card for a guy who worked on a different floor. Gert was supposed to put ten dollars in it for a wedding gift.

  Gert hated these cards. Hallie had told her once that in China, it was the opposite. In China, if something great happened to you, you took everyone else in the office out to dinner; they didn’t take you. That made sense—after all, you were the lucky one. You were the one who was getting married or promoted.

  Marrying the person you loved was not a struggle. The struggle was being able to keep going after you’d lost yours, or not finding one at all. The people who needed cards were those who weren’t engaged, those who weren’t about to have a baby—those who were miserable, single, alone.

  “Congratulations,” Gert wrote unenthusiastically in the card, and stuck in her ten dollars.

  She got up, sauntered down the hall and pitched the card onto the desk of Leon, the long-haired fiftyish nihilist proof-reader. “No backs!” Gert said, and raced back down the hall.

  “Awww, I hate these!” she heard him say.

  As she ran, she looked at the tops of buildings: The GE building, the Paine Webber building, some brown towers she didn’t know the name of.

  At work, the people were mostly older. She had always been glad that she’d been married and hadn’t counted on work as a social outlet. No one in her office went out after hours. The only person there whom she really had thought of as a friend was her boss, but even that had changed over the last few months. Missy was in her mid-forties and still dressed sexily, always in skirts and off-black panty hose. She had an evil sense of humor. But for the past few months, she’d had mood swings that could have registered on the Richter scale. Gert thought it had to do with relationship issues. The rumor was that Missy was having an affair with the chiseled young guy on the ninth floor who worked in the mailroom. There were elevators near the back of the building that could be stopped between floors without setting off alarms.

  What else could she say about Missy? Missy had been saying for years that she was going to get separated from her husband, Dennis, but she never had. Gert had met Dennis at the office Christmas party. He was a sad sack. He hated dancing, so he always stood near the buffet table watching Missy dance up a storm with every guy in the company. Gert wondered why Dennis didn’t try a little harder to keep up with Missy, looks-wise. Not that he should have had to. But he could have at least tried.

  After fobbing off the congratulations card, Gert sat back down and stared at her in-box. The accounts that her boss handled involved baldness remedies, skin creams and hemorrhoid preparations. Not really Gert’s preferences, but she had, from time to time, thought up some pretty funny campaigns for all of them. Watching British comedies with Marc often got her thinking creatively. Someday, Gert could take over those accounts if Missy moved to others. Or she could move to other accounts if she had a portfolio of creative work. But Missy was there to stay, and Gert had put off starting creative work for a long time. There were only so many things you could do at once. She’d been fulfilled enough in the past and had never really expected to get most of her satisfaction nine-to-five, anyway. She went out with Marc’s co-workers, took road trips to see friends, celebrated milestones with both of their families—siblings’ graduations, new babies—cooked together, bought a condo. She had felt feminine doing these things, even. Now she felt like she had to be the man and woman in dealing with every daily chore and struggle.

  Before Marc died, she had been toying with some portfolio ideas that he’d encouraged. But after the accident she’d been uninspired to do anything that disturbed the stasis of other facets of her life, particularly work. Tragedy could certainly make you lose interest in the fast track.

  “Oh my God!” Hallie sang into the phone to Gert that night. “You have to get over to Erika’s apartment. We’re reading Challa’s Web site!”

  Gert was in bed, kicking her heels and watching a romantic movie that was making her feel more depressed than romantic. She had to be careful with forms of entertainment these days. Things that were romantic made her miss Marc. Things that were witty made her miss Marc. Things with action made her miss Marc. She was on a long main course of light and fluffy.

  “I was watching a movie,” Gert told Hallie.

  “What movie?”

  “Before Sunrise,” Gert said.

  “Oh my God, yo
u never saw that?” Hallie asked. “That was ten years ago.”

  Marc would never have seen an Ethan Hawke movie. Especially one about Ethan taking his brooding self on a train through Europe. Gert thought about all the movies she could catch up on now, and then hated herself for the thought. She often thought about the movies Marc would have wanted to see, the ones that were coming out that spring: Both the Matrix and X-Men sequels. Every single time she heard about them, she felt bad, thinking about how excited Marc would have been. If he were there, they’d be strategizing about how to get to see them both on their opening days.

  “I guess I just never rented it,” Gert said of Before Sunrise.

  “Well, I don’t want to take you away, but you have to see the Web site,” Hallie said. “We’re going to order dumplings for dinner and plot strategy.”

  Gert was getting tired of the movie, anyway. Maybe watching other people’s evil machinations would take her mind off her pain. She was going to have to force herself to recover, even if it meant pushing herself into uncomfortable situations.

  “That sounds good,” Gert said, pulling herself up.

  On the N train, Gert remembered the corollary to Hallie’s Law of Maximum Exposure: If you’re single, being outside is always better than staying in, even if you have nowhere to go. You could meet someone getting on the bus, or standing in line buying your shriveled bagel.

  Gert decided that Hallie should either forget these dating rules completely, or put them on a list and publish them. Even if they were myopic and pessimistic, at least someone would find them funny. Maybe Hallie could post them on a Web site for bitter wymyn.

  Erika’s apartment was a studio in Harlem. It hadn’t always been hers alone. Erika had gotten it with a friend right after college. They had hung a blanket across the room to separate it. Eventually, the other girl got married and moved out, and Erika was earning enough money at the design firm to allow her to take the big step of living in the prewar hovel alone.

  It was the coziest apartment Gert had seen in Manhattan. Two of the walls were exposed brick, and there was artwork everywhere. Some of it was stuff Erika had bought, and some was stuff she had designed. Gert knew that both Erika and Ben had been big fans of modern art. Ben had always wanted to be an architect, although from what Gert heard, he had never ended up going to graduate school.

  Gert knocked on Erika’s front door. She heard cackling inside, then steps. When the door swung open, Erika was there, looking pretty and smiling at Gert. Her blond hair was streaked with a few dark lowlights, and it was back in a ribbon. Graphic designers always dressed well.

  “Gertie!” Erika said, and she threw her arms around her and hugged her. Gert felt a surge of warmth. She realized why Hallie always wanted to please Erika. If Erika was in a happy mood, she could make you feel like the most accepted and wanted person in the world—like you were as glamorous as she was. “I’m so glad you’re here,” Erika said. “We need you.”

  Maybe Erika wasn’t so bad.

  Gert followed her to the far corner of the room. Hallie was already sitting in front of Erika’s enormous Macintosh. It had little color printouts taped to it. They were impressive designs.

  “This is great!” Hallie said. “This is so great!”

  “What?”

  “Take a look.”

  Gert peered closely at the screen.

  TO WHOEVER KEEPS POSTING THE

  OBNOXIOUS MESSAGES

  I know your the same person because their all coming from the same server I checked it out. Even if you use diff. screen names you can’t fool me. Your unintelligent and unoriginal to. You obviously don’t like me and I’m not sure what I ever did to you, but tell me and maybe we can come to an understanding about it otherwise I’ll delete every one of your postis.—C.S.

  “You have to help me,” Erika said to Gert. “We need to write some posts, but from different computers. You have a computer at home, right?”

  “Yeah…” Gert said uneasily. She didn’t like where this was going.

  “I need to create more screen names and send messages from different servers,” Erika said. “That way, it won’t be coming from just mine and the Internet café. It’ll really drive Challa nuts. I’m going to write that I’m some girl who had an affair with Ben on a business trip.”

  Hallie’s mouth dropped open, and her gaze moved from the screen to Erika’s face. “You’ve mentioned that before,” she said. “But you said you’d never do it.”

  Erika said, “This girl is living my life, and wasting Ben’s. She’s stupid and needs too much attention. She took my whole life. I should be having kids with him right now.”

  Gert felt nervous. “What if you write that,” Gert said, “and she takes the site down?”

  Erika was quiet for a second.

  “Don’t you understand?” she said, her voice rising. “Don’t you get it? That would be the most wonderful thing in the world.”

  Erika sounded ready to cry. Gert felt embarrassed for her, so she stared at the floor.

  “If Challa took this stupid site down,” Erika said, “then I wouldn’t have to maniacally check it every day to see what Ben’s doing. I wouldn’t have to know everything that’s going on in his life. But I just have to. I have to figure out what he’s doing now, and whether I did the right thing. I just wish the site didn’t exist. But if it does, I have to check it.”

  Gert considered suggesting that Erika pretend the site didn’t exist. But she knew people couldn’t trick themselves in matters of the heart. Hell, she’d certainly tried. She had dutifully repeated positive messages as her therapist had instructed. “If I get through today, I’ll have accomplished something.” “Marc would want me to be happy.” “There was nothing I could’ve done.” “Everything happens for a reason.” These were the lies she’d told herself.

  “I know you guys think this is crazy,” Erika said. “But Ben and I honestly had something. I can’t just forget about it.”

  As the three of them sat on the subway heading toward Gert’s condo, it occurred to Gert that she should have pretended her computer was broken. They would have believed her. There was a nasty computer virus going around called the “Kiss Virus.” It looked like an e-card that said, “KISS…” but when you clicked the link, it said, “…your hard drive goodbye!”

  Gert told herself it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe Erika would just blow off steam for a few minutes and be done with it. At least Erika and Hallie were helping Gert get out of her apartment. She had to cut them more slack. This was Erika’s strange method of getting closure.

  Gert knew about closure. It was a favorite topic in the support group—those women who wished they’d said more to their husbands before they’d died. Gert had her own fantasies, in fact, about that day, all the ways she should have stopped the chain of events that led to Marc’s death.

  “Did you tell Gert about your date?” Erika said to Hallie, pushing a newspaper away on the subway seat.

  “Oh, it’s barely worth telling,” Hallie said. She turned to Gert. “This guy from work set me up with his friend the other night. He’s into seafood, so we went to a seafood place.”

  “Sounds good…” Gert said.

  “Well, it started off that way,” Hallie said, “but…two things. One, he wore a Tweety Bird shirt. It had an emblem of Tweety on the shirt where an alligator would be.”

  “At least he’s different,” Gert offered.

  “Yeah, but,” Hallie said, “he’s totally obsessed with Bugs Bunny and Warner Brothers cartoons.”

  “That’s like a secondary male canon thing,” Gert said. “A lot of guys are into Bugs Bunny cartoons. Remember Marc’s best friend, Craig? He had all the tapes.”

  “I do remember Craig, and I know some guys are into Bugs Bunny,” Hallie said. “But would they wear Tweety Bird on a first date?”

  “I guess not,” Gert admitted.

  “I think the more I go out, the more easily I get irritated by guys who don’t make an
effort,” Hallie said. “I spend so much energy worrying about impressing them, but they don’t even do the basics to look half-decent.”

  “What was the second bad thing about him?” Gert asked.

  “Oh. He kept saying things about us being on a first date, or pointing out that things were awkward, even when I didn’t feel that way,” Hallie said. “Like, our meals came, and the minute I put food in my mouth, he said, ‘So, have you ever gone camping?’ And I said, ‘No, I guess I was never really into that.’ And he was quiet for a second, and then he said, ‘Wow, this is awkward.’”

  “There should be a rule,” Erika said, putting her finger in the air, “that if you actually point out that something is awkward on a date, you immediately get ejected from your chair.”

  Gert was glad that she had felt comfortable with Marc, and then with Todd, right away.

  “I guess I’ll go on one more date with him,” Hallie said. “Everyone deserves a second date.”

  “Not everyone,” Erika said.

  “I’m perfecting a top-secret innovative method to meet men, anyway,” Hallie said. “No more of these horrible blind dates. Both of you will think I’m a genius when you hear my idea.”

  “You said something about this last week,” Erika said. “Tell me already.”

  “I’ll tell you soon,” Hallie said. “I promise. I’m working on it. You’ll both love it.”

  Gert didn’t know whether to look forward to it or dread it.

  Erika was tapping away at the keys of the computer in Marc’s trophy room.

  “My new screen name is Baltimora,” she announced. “It’s in honor of the group that sang that ‘Jungle Love’ song in the eighties, which was on the radio when the alarm went off this morning, so now it’s stuck in my head. And boy, this’ll drive Challa crazy.”